Tag: Catholic

One of the great things about being a Catholic is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Confession, as it’s popularly known. Confession is a spiritual powerhouse. It gives an opportunity for us to accept our faults and failures, hear the words of forgiveness, and then set out on a new start. Saying we’re sorry and commencing again – it’s something we all need to do once-in-awhile.

2.) The Rosary

Saint John Paul said that the Rosary “is a prayer of great relevance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness,” and indeed it has. A prayer unique to Catholics, the Rosary combines meditation on the lives of Jesus and Mary with the recitation of familiar prayers. Through the centuries the Rosary has strengthened Christians going into battle, brought families together, and comforted devout Catholics in times of crisis. The Rosary – so simple, so powerful, and so Catholic!

3.) Saints

Catholics embrace their saints, as favorite, if sometimes eccentric, members of our spiritual family. We turn to the saints for motivation and we turn to them for assistance. Looking for a lost item? Call St. Anthony. Worried about your sick puppy? St. Francis is there to help. Trying to sell a house? Bury St. Joseph. (And then scarf down a zeppole for good measure.) Any Catholic worthy of the name has a favorite saint or two.

4.) Blessings

“The celebration of blessings holds a privileged place among all the sacramentals of the Church for the pastoral rewards of the people of God.” (The Book of Blessings) In other words, Catholics love their blessings. We bless people, pets, homes, cars, meals, religious items and just about anything else. A blessing doesn’t change the nature of the item. It simply shows that it’s dedicated to a religious purpose. It just makes us feel better.

5.) Music

Catholics have a rich tradition of liturgical music. It begins with the heritage of Gregorian chant, a gift of the Church to the world, and moves on to beloved Catholic hymns that many of us grew up singing – the Salve Regina, “Holy God We Praise thy Name,” Tantum Ergo, “Jesus, My Lord, my God, my All.” Catholic congregations aren’t known to be great singers, but when we do, we have an extensive songbook to select from.

Like this:

​In my Protestant life, I held a lot of default positions that I had never given much thought.

One of my main default positions was that the Catholic Church was, at least in some very important ways, wrong.

I had this default because of growing up where I did, and how I did. I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t even know the reasons I rejected Catholic teaching, I just believed they were wrong based on things people said to me over the years. It was the view I was taught. But I realized, as I found myself restless in my faith, that just because I grew up with something was not enough of a justification for me to assume it as correct.

It was an important step for me to acknowledge the default position I learned, but it was also important not to assume that default position I held was necessarily the right one.

Below are some of my Protestant default positions, and then the questions I started asking to allow myself to be more fair and balanced in determining from what viewpoint I was going to approach my faith.

I believed that if there was Truth out there, my taking an honest and fair evaluation of my default positions would lead me closer to it. Truth need not fear an inquiring and honest heart.

Default 1) The Catholic Church is in error.

Questions that challenged my default view:

What valid justification do I have to not give the Catholic Church a fair and objective examination? Is it possible my lack of knowledge about what the Catholic Church teaches is impacting my opinion of it? What gaps do I have in my own understanding of the development of my Christian faith that has informed this belief?

Default 2) The Catholic Bible has books that are not canonical

Questions: Why does the Protestant church have 7 less books than the Catholic Bible? Where in history did that happen? Which books were removed, and for what reason? Did those who made those changes have the authority to do so?

Default 3) We all pretty much believe the same thing, the differences aren’t important

Questions: God gave us an infallible book- wouldn’t he have given us a means to interpret it correctly? Is it fair to assume that it isn’t important to God if the Truth’s of Scripture are known accurately by Christians, or is it? And if it is, who has a claim to interpretive authority that can be backed by the history of the Christian faith as well as the scriptures?

Default 4) Praying to saints is wrong

Questions: What do Catholics mean when they use the word prayer in this context? Do they mean the same thing I mean when I use the word ‘pray?’ Are those in heaven aware of those of us on earth? And if they are aware, why don’t I ask those who have gone before me and are now in heaven to pray for me?

Default 5) Sola Scriptura, Bible Alone

Questions: Where is the evidence for sola scriptura in scripture? It is an authority but is there anywhere in Scripture that claims it to be the final and ultimate authority? What did the earliest Christians do before the New Testament was written and before the canon was confirmed? What does the Bible have to say about the role of the Church and Tradition?

Default 6) Worship should be relevant to the culture.

Questions: What role does church history and traditional Christian practices have in the church today? What value could be found in practicing our faith in a manner similar to the earliest Christians? And what have we lost in the name of cultural relevance?

Default 7) Catholics focus too much on Mary

Questions: What did the early Christians attribute to Mary and why? How can I justify the differences in my view of Mary and the view of Mary of the historical church- including certain views held by Luther and Calvin? Is my discomfort with these teachings due to their falsehood or due to the fact that I am too far separated from the beliefs of the historical Christian Church?

A Default of Ignorance

I found, in my exploration, that I was so entirely ignorant of Catholic teachings because of these original default positions. But I was also ignorant of the history of our faith and what the earliest Christians professed to be true.

Once I opened myself up to the possibility of a different position than the default I had grown up with, I was both surprised and not surprised. Each and every default I had against the Catholic Church turned out to be a misconception. Something I misunderstood or understood incompletely. And once I opened a small crack in the door to the idea to give that which I thought was so wrong a fair shot, I was overwhelmed with depth and truth. Logic and consistency. The beauty of a combination of the thoughts of many, many Christian souls who had gone before me.

And I found myself on my way to living a life of gratitude and peace within the Catholic Church.

LoreleiSavaryn

Lorelei is a passionate Catholic Convert, mom to three, and wife to one. She loves writing, singing (mostly in church, sometimes at karaoke), reading, fair trade chocolate, and spending time with her family. Lorelei currently blogs at This Catholic Family, and is a columnist at CatholicStand.

A popular Francophone African Catholic priest killed in his Berlin bureau, Alain-Florent Gandoulou, has been mourned at a Church Mass. German media say the suspected assailant was from Cameroon.

Berlin’s French-speaking Catholic community held funeral rites for Padre Gandoulouon Sunday February 26, in the city’s St. Thomas Aquinas church, still shocked by the 54-year-old’s violent death on Thursday night.

The Berlin police discovered a lifeless body shortly before midnight, after a phone call from a witness on Thursday night reporting a violent dispute between two men speaking in French inside the Catholic pastoral office. This happened shortly after choir practice according to the eyewitness.

The investigation is ongoing and a motive had not yet been established, according to a police spokeswoman quoted by the Protestant church news agency EPD.

Father Gandoulou had been beaten on the head with office objects and was then stabbed in the head with the tip of an umbrella, Germany’s tabloid newspaper Bild reported.

In his home country, Brazzanews described his death as a possible assassination, in connection with a long-standing insurgency in Congo’s Pool region.

Father Gandoulou, a graduate of Bonn University, had been named as a possible future bishop in Congo, it added.

In Berlin, Gandoulou’s pastoral work included counselling refugees.

Suspect in psychiatric detention

A suspect, a 26-year-old man from Cameroon, was found on Friday in the attic of an apartment house in another Berlin district, Reinickendorf, and was taken to a psychiatric institution, according to police.

The priest’s remains was found inside this building

The Berliner Zeitung (BZ) quoted community member Joachim Moche: “Our priest was always there for us. He brought with him the power to believe and conveyed it to the community. He baptised my son. I am so sad.”

The Francophone pastorate is part of Berlin’s Catholic bishopric and caters for 10,000 French nationals and many thousands of Francophone residents from around the world, according to the Catholic news agency KNA.

‘Very sad moment’

At Sunday’s Mass, the Berlin bishopric’s Vicar General Father Manfred Kolling described Gandoulou’s sudden death as a “very sad moment” and extended condolences from all Berlin Catholics.

Already on Friday, numerous mourners of African origin had gathered outside the church to mourn their highly popular priest public Berlin-Brandenburg broadcasting (RBB) had reported.

Popular in Berlin

Gandoulou was born in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo in 1963. He was ordained as a priest in 1991 and was awarded his doctorate at Bonn University’s theological faculty in 2008.

His topic was “the Battle for Truth and Justice,” focused on the Congolese priest and journalist, Louis Badila, between 1962 and 1990.

In 2009 Gandoulou was assigned to lead the pastoral mission of Berlin’s Paroisse Catholique Francophone, established in 1945.

Raimondo di Sangro’s fame as an alchemist and daring experimentalist has spawned various legends about him. One of these regards the veil of Sanmartino’s Christ. For over two-hundred-and-fifty years, in fact, travellers, tourists and even a number of academics, incredulous at the transparency of the shroud, have mistakenly thought it the result of some alchemical process of “marblisation” worked by the Prince of Sansevero.

In reality, the Veiled Christis entirely hewn in marble from a single block of stone, as scrupulous study and documents dating from the time of the statue show.

The Cristo Velato (that is, the Veiled Christ) is a sculpture completed in 1753, originally (mis)attributed to Antonio Corradini and considered one of the world’s most remarkable pieces of art. In fact, the great neoclassical maestro Antonio Canova, who tried to buy the work, said he would gladly give up ten years of his life to produce such masterpiece.

Although Corradini was in fact commissioned with the job in the first place, he died having only produced a clay model for what would later be a definitive piece sculpted in marble. It was Giuseppe Sammartino, then, who ended up producing the astonishing sculpture of a dead Jesus, covered by a transparent shroud carved out of the very same marble block shared with the rest of the statue. Sammartino’s mastery – the veil covering the figure of Jesus being in fact “transparent” — didn’t only gain him a well-deserved place in the history of Western art, but also turned his artwork into the stuff of legend.

Some stories claim Sammartino covered his sculpture with a linen veil he managed to transform into marble by means of complex chemical-alchemical processes. Those very same legends would also claim that Raimondo di Sangro, the commissioner of the sculpture, was himself an alchemist who taught Sammartino the mysteries of his pseudo-science. Of course, these are but legends.

The statue is today preserved in the Capella Sansevero, in Naples, Italy.